Remember Citadel: Dev Livestreams And A Fan Remake

Happy birthday, SHODAN! The puckish AI with delusions of godhood turned 20 on Monday (as did System Shock, I guess), and would be flattered by what some are doing to celebrate and glorify her. Firstly, a group of System Shock’s creators got together to stream the Looking Glass classic and gas about the dear old gal and their game. If watching isn’t enough, (another) project aiming to remake System Shock has appeared, and it’s looking pretty good so far.

Unlike many fan remakes, Citadel is trying to emulate the original System Shock look down to the pixellated textures it’s borrowing from the game. It’s swapping out sprites for 3D models and bringing fancier lighting through the Quake-based DarkPlaces engine but avoiding modern shine-o-vision. It’ll add co-op and competitive multiplayer modes too.

Project founder Josiah Jack has worked alone on Citadel since July and yesterday announced it to recruit more help. He plans to release it on December 23rd (the 20th anniversary of the System Shock CD release that added voiced dialogue), which seems a mite optimistic to me.

But right here, right now, is the stream with System Shock folks including programmer Marc LeBlanc and designers Tim Stellmach and Austin Grossman playing and chatting. They played for seven hours (split into four parts) and didn’t manage to finish the game (they might return) but hey, it’s about the journey, not the destination. And don’t worry, they do sort out the audio levels eventually.